61 Osteria
Restaurant · Downtown
First on 7th Building, 500 W 7th St, Fort Worth, TX 76102
Highlights
Italian with Texan twists, wild game, handmade pastas, cocktails
Italian with Texan twists, wild game, handmade pastas, cocktails
"Restaurateur Dain “Adam” Jones and chef Blaine Staniford make a damn good pair. Their latest endeavor is an Italian restaurant that weaves together the threads of Italian and West Texas cooking: Wild game, simple ingredients, and eating adventurously from a menu that sometimes includes unexpected combinations of Texan and Italian ingredients; the wine menu is smartly curated to mostly feature Italian bottles. The restaurant’s moody dining room looks out into a park across the street, while the buildings of Downtown Fort Worth loom all around. A back wall features large-scale art created by artist Joey Lancaster, who also happens to be Jones’s wife. It landed a Best New Restaurant nod in the 2024 Eater Awards." - Courtney E. Smith
"Restaurateur Dain “Adam” Jones and chef Blaine Staniford make a damn good pair. Their latest endeavor is an Italian restaurant that weaves together the threads of Italian and West Texas cooking: Wild game, simple ingredients, and eating adventurously from a menu that sometimes includes unexpected combinations of Texan and Italian ingredients; the wine menu is smartly curated to mostly feature Italian bottles. The restaurant’s moody dining room looks out into a park across the street, while the buildings of Downtown Fort Worth loom all around. A back wall features large-scale art created by artist Joey Lancaster, who also happens to be Jones’s wife. It landed a Best New Restaurant nod in the 2024 Eater Awards. Know before you go: The dining room is great for large parties, but groups of two and solo diners are better off grabbing a table or a stool in the bar, which has a very different, more relaxed atmosphere." - Courtney E. Smith
"This stunning space in Downtown Fort Worth has classics on the menu but the real things to try are its big swings. Like in Italy, many dishes include wild game and seasonal ingredients, but since we’re in Texas the chef focuses on what’s available here. Sometimes that means stretching the boundaries and creating a venison osso bucco or using brisket in the Bolognese, but the inventiveness is what makes it so darned interesting." - Courtney E. Smith
"It’s not often that a Fort Worth restaurant wins an Eater Award for Dallas, but this one did in 2024, garnering the best new restaurant title. It offers a Texan take on Italian dishes and a sleek, sophisticated interior design, with large format paintings on the back wall and the striking chandelier in the center of the dining room.The restaurant’s menu reflects a classic Italian cuisine with handmade pastas and offerings like Mediterranean branzino, veal tenderloin marsala, and a bistecca Fiorentina." - Michael Ellington
"An experimental Italian restaurant in the First on 7th Building that uses sweeping floor-to-ceiling windows to frame views of Downtown. The menu follows a classic Italian structure (antipasti, primi, secondi, mains) but is highly inventive and playful — dishes can be uneven but frequently achieve striking, memorable highs. The spot is best enjoyed slowly: order a cocktail, share items across courses and let the kitchen's risk-taking reveal itself." - Courtney E. Smith
